1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to method and apparatus for a graphical user interface in medical imaging. In particular, the present invention provides a method and apparatus for browsing thumbnail images of medical objects to support selection of relevant medical data to be selected and reviewed for clinical assessments and other purposes before loading the medical objects.
2. Description of the Related Art
Medical personnel regularly work with and review medical data such as medical image data. This medical data may be viewed on a variety of devices and systems, resulting in the same data being displayed in different ways on different devices. Clinical applications are usually based on distributed systems that are interconnected by one or more networks. Medical users typically work with patient data on a user component of the system (where the user component acts for example as a client), while the data is stored on another component of the system (for example the data is stored on a server). For clinical and other purposes, medical users browse through a plurality of medical data sets and make a choice of which images should be loaded and displayed (for example on the client machine or other user component). The set of data being reviewed is usually represented on a display by graphical objects or by means of a list that are displayed to the user on the display panel or screen of the client machine or client component. If the medical data being reviewed is radiological data, for some radiological images the user can make a choice from among the data with greater ease if the data is depicted as thumbnail images, or so-called thumbnails, of the images. For other images or data, a list of the data would be more informative to the user in making a selection than a thumbnail image. Sometimes both types of information needs to be considered alternatively by the user to make a choice as to which data is to be loaded and displayed.
In medical imaging, different imaging techniques (for example ultrasound imaging and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging techniques and the like) result in different types of image data as the output. Depending on the image type and depending on the clinical use case, different requirements arise as to how to display the data in order to provide optimal support for the chosen image data in a browsing or display application. For example, a comparison between the different images has to be made. The system has to supply sufficient information to the user to distinguish the data. Due to the fact that some of the medical data consists of huge volumes of data, which in turn leads to long loading times, it is helpful to be able to select the relevant data before the image data is loaded from storage to the display device.
Moreover, the user has to take into account a huge number of different types of information with respect to the specific clinical use case. Therefore, it is necessary that a general display pattern as a structure for displaying the medical data remains constant. Since radiological image acquisition follows well known procedures, users also take into account information regarding the sequence and the position of the images and of items of medical information that may be associated with the medical data, or image data, when searching for the target data, for example, to be reviewed in detail. Therefore, any change in the underlying structure for the display of the medical objects is a disadvantage for the user.
Additionally, medical applications run on various devices with different technical conditions (for example the devices may have different screen sizes and monitor resolutions or different video driver systems). A fixed setting such as the item size or the number of medical objects to be displayed can create a mismatch between the technical display capabilities of the specific device and the actual display of items for the purpose of browsing the display items.
In the state of the art, various systems and methods are known for viewing pictures. However, with respect to medical imaging, known graphical applications do not fulfill the display requirements for browsing medical image data sufficiently. In particular, it is not possible to control an image size of the medical objects and the number of the medical objects separately.
A freeware program called “Irfan View” displays various image formats. This program provides controls or settings for thumbnail size in pixels to determine a display size. The number of thumbnail images that will be displayed usually cannot be controlled directly.
In particular and with respect to medical imaging, it is helpful that the objects to be displayed are displayed in a structure or arrangement which remains constant even in case of adjusting of the window size in which the objects are to be displayed. Moreover, it is necessary that a user is able to get more detailed information with respect to the object to be displayed before loading the object into the user machine or client component. Therefore, it would be a drawback if the objects were to be displayed in a fixed manner, namely without the possibility to adjust the number of items to be displayed and the size of the items in the display.
Therefore, there is a need for providing a method for displaying medical objects for the purpose of browsing the objects which includes an augmented functionality with respect to display capabilities. It should be possible that a user is able to make a more dedicated choice with respect to displaying medical objects. In other words, the user should be able to select the display setting that better meets the user's needs. Further, it should be possible to control the number of medical objects that are to be displayed and to control the size of the medical objects to be displayed separately, while maintaining a general display pattern for displaying the medical objects. Moreover, controlling of the size and the number of objects should be made as simple as possible. In particular, the number of control units for adjusting the display parameters should be minimized.